About Brenna Prather

Posts by Brenna Prather:

As the semester draws to a close, I look back at some of the major aspects of the ‘Urinetown’ process. The paint call was definitely one aspect that taught me quite a bit. I have done some painting in the past, but never to such a scale as was done that day. I ended up helping with painting the arches for the sewage/secret hideout scene, as well as painted some soft-covered flats. It was interesting to see how you have to make a certain combination of water and paint to work with the muslin. And it turns out what knowledge I had from small scale painting works in large scale work – such as creating a base and then doing another layer. Plus, I had a lot of fun! I’d be interested in trying out some more painting of scenery in the future, that’s for sure.*

So ‘Urinetown’ had its 10 out of 12 on Sunday. It was the first time the actors were in full costume and under lights on stage, so at the end of rehearsal, DJ (the director) had a few notes for the costume team. One of which was that the poor costumes didn’t look poor enough. They needed to be distressed. At first, I was rather upset, because I had thought that distressing would involve a large amount of work and that nothing would be done in time for the next dress rehearsal. On Monday, I was helped out Rachel, Donna, and everyone at the costume shop, and was then able to learn more about distressing. I never realized that the textile paint I was playing with in Costume Construction earlier in the semester was not only a fabric paint, but could also create these great effects on clothing, like pit stains, water marks, and other such gross effects. It turns out it wasn’t so scary after all, the costumes were done on time, and now I understand what is really involved in distressing clothing.I even got to help in distressing Gabrielle Petrosino’s hair bows for her Little Sally costume! *